Jack [Black] is Back as `Kung Fu Panda' Star

By David Germain June 5, 2008 11:37am ET

Jack Black, the voice of Po the panda in the new animated movie "Kung Fu Panda," appears on the NBC "Today" television progam, in New York Wednesday June 4, 2008. Finding his inner panda was not too much of a stretch for Jack Black. All it took was finding the essence of his inner Jack. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

CANNES,
France (AP) - Finding his
inner panda was not too much of a stretch for Jack Black. All it took was
finding the essence of his inner Jack.

With Black providing the lead voice, the animated comedy
``Kung Fu Panda'' spins the tale of an unlikely savior who finds that becoming
the best version of himself is the true hero's path.

For Black's Po the panda, a clumsy, tubby behemoth picked by
destiny to become a martial-arts master, that meant playing on his strengths,
such as using food as an incentive to learn his own variation of kung fu moves.

For chubby funny man Black, the unlikely transition from
character roles to leading man required a similar effort to define his own
voice and persona on screen.

Before his breakout role as a condescending record-shop
clerk in ``High Fidelity,'' he had been more of a mimic than an actor, Black
said. His side gig as a member of the music duo Tenacious D changed that.

``I was always trying to kind of imitate the actors that I
liked. I was always kind of just doing what I thought the great actors would
do,'' Black said in an interview at the Cannes Film Festival. ``And then I kind
of found my own voice when I wrote songs and sketches for Tenacious D. I was
just being me. I wasn't trying to be somebody else, like John Malkovich or
whoever my favorite actor was at the time. And that came through with `High
Fidelity' for the first time. It was just me doing my thing, and it's the same
thing as this movie. Be your own hero. It makes a lot of sense and resonates
with me, because I feel there's a lot of truth to that.''

Black, 38, previously dabbled in animation with voices as a
tiger in ``Ice Age'' and a vegetarian shark in ``Shark Tale,'' the latter
played as ``kind of a nebbishy New Yorker, Woody Allen-type,'' he recalled.

For ``Kung Fu Panda,'' DreamWorks Animation boss Jeffrey
Katzenberg wanted the real Black - his own voice, his own personality. Pitching
the story to Black, Katzenberg even had some raw animation of the character
prepared with dialogue borrowed from ``High Fidelity,'' Black said.

``It was a fun experience not hiding behind a character
voice this time. When you do the character voice, that can be fun and it can
inform the character, but you also get distracted by that, and this way, I
could just focus on what was funny in the scene,'' Black said.

``In a way, I feel like this is my most fleshed out and the
most satisfied I've been with a role,'' Black said. ``Where a lot of times, on
most movies, I have a lot of leftover stuff that I didn't feel I totally nailed
as much as I wanted to. I had no regrets on this one, though, no parts where I
was like, I wish I could have done this better.''

``Kung Fu Panda'' directors Mark Osborne and John Stevenson
recalled a magazine interview in which Black pondered his childhood in a way
that fit the character of Po, a panda toiling in his family's noodle restaurant
while sensing he had another calling elsewhere.

Po idolizes ancient China's martial-arts experts,
including a tigress (voiced by Angelina Jolie), a viper (Lucy Liu) and a monkey
(Jackie Chan). The cast also features Dustin Hoffman providing the voice of the
martial-arts master reluctantly teaching Po
the moves after the panda is declared a prophesied hero.

In the magazine interview, Black discussed how ``he knew he
was weird, and he didn't know if he was going to be good weird, but he decided
to be the weirdest he could be, so that whichever end of weird he ended up on,
he would at least be fully committed to that,'' Osborne said. ``We really
wanted to make this a vehicle for him and a way for us to showcase the best
part of Jack, which is thematic for the movie. Let him be the best version of
himself through this character.''

Growing up in Southern California,
Black was an artsy kid, drawing, acting and singing. He joined the Actors Gang
in Los Angeles
founded by Tim Robbins, who cast him in small roles in ``Bob Roberts,'' ``Dead
Man Walking'' and ``Cradle Will Rock.''

After stealing all his scenes in ``High Fidelity,'' Black
grabbed lead roles in such films as ``Shallow Hal,'' ``The School of Rock,''
``Nacho Libre'' and ``King Kong.''

``I would definitely have been satisfied if I could have a
career character-actor trajectory,'' Black said. ``Even when I was doing `High
Fidelity,' I wasn't thinking, oh, this could be a great steppingstone to
getting the lead role in feature films. That was never the goal. Those doors
just sort of opened after `High Fidelity,' which was great but definitely
beyond my dreams.''

Late this summer, Black co-stars as a drug fiend of an actor
stuck in the jungle with his cast mates (including Ben Stiller and Robert
Downey Jr.) on a war film in the Hollywood spoof ``Tropic Thunder,'' which also
features Tom Cruise.

He also co-stars with Michael Cera in Harold Ramis' upcoming
``Year One,'' a comedy set in ancient times.

Black and band mate Kyle Gass played over-the-top versions
of themselves in ``Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny,'' a fictionalized comedy
about how their duo came together.

The movie came and went quickly at theaters, with critics
finding it unamusing and self-indulgent. Like the band Tenacious D itself, the
movie has picked up a bit of a cult audience on DVD, Black said.

``A lot of enthusiastic stoners were like, `Yeah, du-u-u-de!
Just saw it!''' Black said. ``I was like, `Where were you when the movie came
out?' `Sorry, dude, I was hi-i-i-gh!'''